This is a piece of Flash Fiction I wrote that takes place in the house I used to live in. It was haunted, and several of these pranks occurred while I lived there. Grady Whitlow didn’t break in while I was there, but I did have a peeping Tom who luckily realized it was better to leave than break inside. It helped that I had five big dogs with me instead of just Kipper. 

House Watchers

I’m caught in a tug of war between sleep and being a responsible adult as I wake in the warm cocoon of the fleece blanket. With a groan, I open my eyes, blinking at the patterns on what looks like a tin ceiling.

“Where am I?”

I jerk as a furball squirms against my side, and a dog pushes his way up. Ohhhhh. My heart slows. “Morning, Kipper.” I stroke the Yorkshire Terrier and push out of the antique bed. I’m watching Mrs. Perry’s Post-Revolutionary-War manor house while she visits her grandchildren.

With a shiver, my gaze follows snowflakes drifting from a cloud-heavy sky outside the window. Blizard warnings had been on the news the night before along with Groundhog Day predications and a news bulletin about an escaped convict. Just the thing you want to hear when you’re all alone out in the country.

Do you have an alarm system? I’d asked.

Mrs. Perry had giggled. “Oh no. There’s no need.”

I beg to differ.

Kipper’s nails click as he dances about the guest suite, waiting for me to finish brushing my teeth and getting dressed. He yips as if saying, ‘Come on, Heather. My bladder is the size of a walnut.’

“Alright, little man.” I pull on a cozy blue sweater and jeans, ignore the creepy, porcelain doll music box on the dresser, and step down the worn stairs. I drag my fingers across the spines of books lining the old library as I walk through to the living room. Like most old houses, each room has doors to conserve heat when hearths were lit long ago.

After shoveling a path for Kipper, he finishes quickly and trots back inside. He shakes, scattering the melting snowflakes off his silky fur. We eat breakfast and settle in the living room.

The curtainless bay window seat makes me feel like I’m sitting in a shaken snow globe as snow dances in the wind outside. Gorgeous. I go to grab the glass of water I’d poured, realizing I forgot it in the kitchen. But Kipper is nestled beside me, and I don’t want to disturb him.

Snap!

My face jerks up. “Damn,” I whisper, thinking of the mouse traps that Mrs. Perry said she’d put out. Kipper leaps off the lounger, and I follow him into the kitchen to find the wooden mousetrap in the corner sprung. Using a flyswatter, I crouch, my face scrunched, before the upturned trap, nudging it to flip over. My tight face relaxes. No mouse.

I exhale. “Best check the rest.” I certainly don’t want the smell of a decaying mouse to fill the house over the next week. Mrs. Perry had rattled off last-minute information as she lowered into her Uber to the airport. Check the ten mousetraps, water the plants, and don’t go out of your room at night. Did that last warning have to do with mice? I shudder.

Snap!

I jump, one hand to my heart and the other raising the flyswatter like a sword. A second trap? I take a step toward the sound in the pantry.

Snap!

I swivel back toward the living room where I’d been sitting, swatter still overhead. A five so far? Kipper barks.

Snap! Snap!

Gasping, I stand in the kitchen, my arms out and knees bent as if I’m a ninja ready to kick ass with nunchucks instead of a fly swatter.

Snap! Snap!

I run into the living room where Kipper bounces along the couch, barking.

Snap!

I spin in my socks in time to see the mousetrap by the front door leap a foot in the air with the force. But there’s no mouse in it, and no mouse scurries away.

Snap!

I turn back to the kitchen.

Snap!

I do a 180 as a trap goes off in the library behind me. Eyes wide, heart pounding, I stand alert, and finally Kipper stops barking. Only the snow pelting the windows breaks through the whistle of the wind. I look at the little dog. “Was that ten?”

Heavy, even footsteps come from the library. My breath stops. Someone’s in the house! I stand there, eyes wide, flyswatter in hand. But the steps fade and no one comes through the library door toward me. Which is a good thing, since my choice of weapon is a flimsy piece of plastic on a stick.

I drop the swatter and grab a brass bookend shaped like the Lincoln Memorial. It’s fricking heavy, and I hold it with two hands, peeking into the library. “Anyone here?” My voice cracks. Only a twig scraping the window answers. Horror movie vibes for sure.

Mrs. Perry’s words through the lowered back window of the Uber come back to me. And the ghosts are friendly, though mischievous. They drive poor Kipper crazy.

I hadn’t thought much of her gentle warning for two reasons: I don’t believe in ghosts and Mrs. Perry is ninety-five years old. But now…

I clear my throat, speaking loudly. “I’m just here to care for Kipper.” A full minute of stillness goes by, and I look at Kipper who looks at me. “Think they’re gone?”

Kipper whines and looks away, his fluffy head tilting.

“What is it?” I whisper. My heart thumps like a bird panicking in a cage.

The dog’s eyes are trained on the corner, and his gaze slides along the wall to the opposite corner where a wrought iron stand holds brightly colored umbrellas. A set of decorative plates depicting scenes from the American Revolutionary War hang on the wall above it.

The collector plates start to rattle in their holders. I can’t breathe, can barely move, my fight or flight instinct deserting me. My fingers ache from holding the heavy brass monument to good old Abe.

The plates rattle faster, louder, and Kipper yips at them, his entire body straining.

Crash! Something in the kitchen shatters. I squeak, and the two-ton bookend slips from my fingers. It bounces off my little toe to land on the plush throw rug, and my scream adds to the cacophony. Falling in a heap, I grab my foot, the pain taking priority over the poltergeist that’s probably going to suck me into the boxy TV set against the far wall. At this point, I don’t give a shit.

Stabbing pain! I roll on my back, gripping my foot while Kipper yaps and dances around and over me. This is where I will die. Trampled by a little dog. Death by broken toe. Mrs. Perry will tell the cops about the ghosts, and they will cart her away and write my death off as heart failure. The local news anchor will call it a shame.

Kipper lays down beside me as I wait to regain my will to live. After hours, days, months…well what feels like forever, the pain recedes to a dull throb. With a grunt, I push onto my knees and then my good foot. “Ice,” I murmur, looking to the kitchen. And I need to clean up whatever crashed on the floor.

I hobble into the kitchen and stop, balancing on one foot as I stare. In the center of the kitchen, sitting on the wooden floor, is my water glass. Still full, as if someone had just set it on the floor. Kipper trots over to lap some water out of it.

Brows raised, I whisper. “We aren’t staying here, Kipper.” I’m in a fricking horror movie. “Friendly, my ass.” I glance out the window at the thickening snow. “Let’s find your little sweater. You can help me dig the car out.” I hesitate but look at the full glass of water sitting on the floor. “Nope. Not staying.”

Scooping up the dog, I hobble back to the front room and huff. I need to get my things from above, important things like car keys. “Don’t go near the TV,” I say and set Kipper down. I hurry through the library and up the stairs.

Walking briskly into the bedroom, I yank my suitcase from under the bed and start throwing my clothes in. The tinny notes of ‘You Are My Sunshine’ ring out in the room, and I spin to see the porcelain doll music box on the high dresser moving the bird cage it’s holding as the notes play out. The doll’s little head moves side to side. Prickles race up my nape and down my arms.

“Hell no!” I grab my keys, abandoning the clothes, and run, grimacing, from the room and down the stairs.

Kipper yaps ferociously in the living room. Crash!

I stop in the doorway between the library and living room as the front door splinters inward. I gasp, my mouth falling open as a large man kicks inside. His huge boots track in snow.

He turns to me and grins. “Hello, love.”

My heart, which was already in full panic mode, pounds so hard that it hurts. Terror of a different kind rolls through me. Kipper dashes at him, full of tiny-dog rage, but the man’s boot kicks out, clipping him. “Kipper!” I scream, and he runs to me, jumping into my arms. The dog trembles, and I back away.

“The yippy pooch will be going out in the snow so we can have a little fun,” the man says.

He glances around. “What a cozy little place you have here, far away from everyone.” He smiles yellow teeth at me. “Where no one can hear you scream.”

Scream? I can’t even speak. Panic has paralyzed me.

Icy wind swirls through the room so hard, it feels like I’m being pushed. Numb feet carry me back into the library. He follows like a predator hunting prey. I back through the room out to the base of the stairs. Stopping in the middle of the library, he pulls out a switchblade. “Let’s have a look at you, love.”

Slam! I jump, and the man spins to see the door between the library and living room shut. “What the hell?” he yells.

Slam! The door before my face slams shut, closing him inside the library.

“Hey!” he yells through the door. I step back as he tries to turn the knob, but it’s stuck.

He screams, a surprised, guttural yell, and the sound of books hitting walls makes me flinch. I should run, but my feet seem attached to the floorboards.

“Holy Mother Mary!” he yells as large thumps and glass shattering fills the closed room, drowning out his screams. For long minutes, Kipper and I listen as I cling to the little dog in shock until… Silence.

“911. What’s your emergency?”

“Someone broke in! He’s unconscious on the floor. I think he’s the convict who escaped.”

An hour later, paramedics carry out the man named Grady Whitlow, the serial rapist who’d escaped. He’s strapped to a stretcher and babbling. “Flying books! The curtains tried to strangle me! So cold!” He shivers uncontrollably.

The policewoman glances inside the perfectly tidy library and shakes her head, looking at me. “Very smart, locking him in that room.”

Without waiting for my response, she calls over her shoulder. “Order a psychiatric assessment, and have Collins send over someone to fix the door. She can’t stay here with snow blowing in.”

She looks at me, her hard eyes softening. “Unless you’d rather go somewhere else, Miss McCollum.”

I hug Kipper to me on the lounge chair, glancing around at the house. Everything is calm and quiet, and…protected. I rub my nose against the dog’s soft coat. Inhaling, I shake my head. “No,” I say, grinning as I watch the Boston Tea Party plate tip backwards, clicking into place in its holder. My mouth relaxes in a slight smile. “I think…I’ll be fine right here.”